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I recently finished reading Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. For some time hence this book was recommended to me, but it was a while before I finally entertained the notion of reading the novel. The author creates a world devoid of books and thinking which, in essence, produce stoic, indifferent human beings.
But there is one man who refuses to tolerate such a world. With difficulty he rises against the majority, but will he succeed in this battle? Read the novel to find out.
Rating: 4/4
Last night I finished Going Postal by Terry pratchett
Wow that book was almost as good as if not as good as the newspaper book I just have one q though when did Ridd9whatever his name is be come the archdecon I missed that book???
Ridcully?
We think that he has been it for quite some time (and there is no book whenhe started)
There are two Ridcully-brothers btw, one of them is a head wizard, the other a leading religious figure.
REally? I think I might have my characters mixed up I thought Ridcully was the wizard from the colour of magic??
Earlier this evening, I finally finished Middlemarch by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans). This novel seemed, at times, a little difficult to read, as Eliot had a very narrative style with sometimes very verbose descriptions. Regardless, I thought the characters seemed complex and astoundingly well detailed; Eliot achieved her goal well to write something apart from the "stereotypical" women writers of her day.
Though I adore Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, I have always thought Eliot's goal highly admirable and worth praise to corrupt the expectation of writing a classical romance story, as did many female authors of her contemporary day. Silas Marner seemed the same, but incomparable to Middlemarch, reading entirely and surprisingly different.
The plot, itself, seemed to jump around a fair amount, but I somewhat expected this, having seen it in so many other longer novels; towards the middle of the book, however, everything fit together, and Eliot wrote a true masterpiece.
My rating: 9.5/10.
The History of Danish Dreams, Peter Hoeg. The book is comparable to 'one hundred years of solitude' It seduces and lulls you. I read it while visiting friends who live on an island and are busy living out their various hippy dreams so it was lovely to delve into the heavey ?danish? atmosphere. Borderliners is my fave Hoeg book tho.
Fnord- Gibson rocks, i loved pattern recognition, but i love all william gibson, mona lisa overdrive is not to be missed, but read them in order
Wendigo - Tristam Shandy is one of the funniest characters ever written, after reading it do you sometimes get the idea that other people copied his ideas more or less blatently.
Sleepovers and Secrets by J. Wilson
More books by Wilson aimed at young readers (girls). After reading a few of her books, I can see why she is so popular. She is a good story teller and humourous. Also, she is concentrating on different issues in her books, which is something I like about them. In Sleepovers, she deals with disability and Secrets with physical abuse and the difficulties single parent families face. With parent approved moral messages at the end of her stories, she manages to gain the hearts of both children and parents alike.
8/10 KitKats!
Tamsin - Peter S. Beagle (Rating: 10/10)
From Publishers Weekly,
Like his enchanting The Last Unicorn, Beagle's newest fantasy features characters so real they leap off his pages and into readers' souls. Tamsin Willoughby, dead some 300 years, haunts ramshackle old Stourhead Farm in Dorset, England, an ancient 700-acre estate that 13-year-old Jenny's new, English stepfather is restoring. Thoroughly American Jenny, miserable at being transplanted from New York City to rural Britain, finds a suffering kindred spirit in Tamsin, a ghost who is mourning Edric, a love she lost during Dorset's punitive Bloody Assizes under King James II. Tamsin leads Jenny through an engrossing night world inhabited by an array of British spiritsAthe Black Dog, a braggart Boggart, ominous Oakmen, the shapeshifting Pooka and a marvelous mystical army-booted Earth Mother. To save Tamsin and gentle Edric from eternal torment, Jenny faces evil personified: demonic Judge Jeffries, who sentenced hundreds of people to brutal execution during the Assizes.....[/Snip]
It's a beautiful book. Beagle's prose is lyrical, quirky and full of funny little odds and ends that are the hallmark of a truly great author.
The book may be titled Tamsin, and the struggle for her freedom take centre-stage plotwise, but the real heroine will always be Jenny. She is hip, she is awkward and she is the quintessential contra-modern kid who smokes pot, plays at being independent and feels proud of being a rebel. A kid to whom self-awareness has been gifted far earlier than most. But a kid who I felt had a heart of gold.
Things that stood out for me:
The prose. Not a single awkward sentence, misplaced similie, unintelligible metaphor or stilted dialogue. Humor and charm oozes off every single sentence and the flow of the narrative completely sucks you in.
Interaction between the characters, specially Jenny and her step-brothers. The development of Julian's and Jenny's friendship was fuzzily charming and great to read.
Old english manors seem to breathe a life of their own, and the sense of enchantment is doubled when they team up with pusedo-celtic creatures and a good 'ol English wood to setup a brilliant setting.
Tamsin herself was a very interesting ghosts. I don't think I have encountered such a good natured ghost before. It really was a fantastical experience slipping in and out of Tamsin's timeline into Jenny's. Both had their own distinctive feels and the historical touches felt just about right.
This may not be the perfect book for most, but I honestly am having trouble thinking of even a single point that bugged me. Probably Meena's continuous mentions of the exoticness of India became a little annoying after a while, but even there I felt that they were more tongue-in-check than based on the general western wonder of oriental cultures.
I think other people have taken ideas from him but not to the extent that Sterne did. Sterne basically took complete passages from other authors. This link can better explain than I can.Quote:
Originally Posted by sonikchic
Charge of Plagarism
I do not enjoy his novel any less because of the acts of plagiarism. For all I know he could of read the authors when he was younger and come back to him as an older man who thought it his own idea.
He "took inspiration" from many authors before him and I don't mind the copying of ideas, tristra-pedia and the vagaries of narratives from Rabelais, as much as the complete copying of passages. The copying of ideas is how humanity has learned to pass down knowledge to younger generation. To end this reply I would like to give you a quote my 7th grade English teacher gave me. "To copy from one person is plagarism, but to copy from two or more is research."
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
To sum it up quite simply Wuthering Heights is a story about love, death and revenge. To anyone who wants to think more about the story they can see betrayal, grief, mental illness, obession and passion woven between the main storylines.
It tells the tale of the young orphan Heathcliff as he is brought to the Earnshaw house. His childhood is one mixed with joy and pain brought from his two companions Cathy and Hindley. Cathy is a warm and gentle friend, Hindley is a cruel oppressor when he becomes their guardian. After a betrayal from Cathy though, Heathcliff vanishes.
When he returns a mysteriously rich and handsome gentleman, there is wonder at his change. But although appearances change, the darkness of his heart hasn't been swept away entirely. Through slow and indirect methods he gains his revenge on those he loves and those he hates, until he finds himself in a world of darkness that he longs to escape.
Throughout the book we're introduced to several members of the Earnshaw and Linton families, all who have such different approches to love and hate and revenge, as we journey through Heathcliff's life, told by the partially biased housekeeper and witness, Nelly Dean.
Overall the book is a deep tale of so many aspects of the human mind, that it can be a bit confusing between that and the complex relationships that exist among the characters, but once you grasp the story you're bound to find it one of the most fascinating books of all time.
I finished The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown . I found this book REALLY good and kept me very interested. I liked the way he included facts throughout, but was also able to make a good story out of it. Almost every chapter ended on a cliffhanger, and it has a very good ending! I literally couldn't put this book down, and for me, what defines a good book is when I read a name and don't think, "Who is that again?" and have to go back.
All in all....AMAZINGLY clever and a fab read!!
9/10!
Several books I've read recently:
Chesapeake by James A. Michener (10/10)
An apt description of Chesapeake, as with most of Michener’s works, is that it is historical fiction of the grandest scale. This sprawling novel traces the genealogy of three families (Steed, Paxmore, and Turlock) who’ve contributed significantly to the culmination of the Chesapeake, the great American bay located on the eastern shore. The reader is guided through four centuries of development starting from the late 1500s when the bay was largely occupied by the Native Americans up to the 1960s when racial tensions were spurring up and the Watergate scandal was just coming into fruition. Michener handles each of these time spans with meticulous care, from the minute details such as the preparation of crab cakes to more exceeding issues such as the African slave trade, thus managing to enlighten the reader yet, simultaneously, written in a fashion that remains utterly captivating as well. Overall, I found this novel to be absolutely engrossing and highly recommend it for anyone interested in American history.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (9/10)
The star attraction of this book doesn’t focus on a deep and gripping plot, which is in itself fairly shallow (i.e. boy finds dead dog, boy investigates the murder), but on a style of writing that so convincingly puts the reader into the perspective of a young autistic boy. I can’t exactly vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the author’s portrayal of this syndrome but the book provides a fascinating look into how a person whose powers of concentration are so narrow and whose thinking processes are so sequential that his outlook of the world more closely mirrors how a computer would intake information. Read it for the perspective more so than the plot.
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (9.5/10)
One of the more enjoyable books I’ve so far this year. The story’s about a boy who stumbles upon a rare book by an obscure author. In his endeavor to uncover the mystery behind this author, the young man is gradually embroiled in history that’s more foreboding and sinister than whence he initially assumed. The reliance on a deus ex machina cheapened the climax somewhat and a few of the characters were rather over-the-top, probably intentionally done so, but were imbued with so much flavor and personality that they still remained endearing. A real page turner.
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson (7.5/10)
A typical courtroom drama novel set in the 1960s on San Pierdro, a fictitious island off the coast of the state of Washington. A murder trial is underway to determine the innocence of a Japanese man convicted of the murder of a German fisherman. My main gripe is that the outcome of the trial is fairly predictable about half-way through the book, particularly when the protagonist, a newspaper reporter, discovers a plot device that conveniently unveils the truth behind the murder. As such, those expecting a brilliant plot-twist near the end will probably be disappointed. A fairly average book overall.
The Minds of Billy Milligan by David Keyes
"Imagine yourself standing in front of a sink. You're getting a glass of water. And the whole world around you instantaneously changes, and now you're in a park acting like you're getting a glass of water. Out of thin air. And you just lost that time." (Billy Milligan)
I have to say that reading the story of Sybil, the woman with 16 different personalities, was already quite a shocking reading experience, esp. for me. Billy Milligan, a man with 24 different selves (including 'him self'), is the first man who was freed from charges of several crimes (including rapes and armed robberies) due to his multiple personalities (pleaded insanity). It is unbelievable to read how the other 23 selves of Billy developed and each became a distinctive character with his/her own skills and capabilities (even language capabilities); and all of them were the result of Billy's self denial due to mental, physial, and sexual abuses during his childhood. And these other selves, put the 'real' Billy in to 'sleep' because they considered him dangerous for the other selve's existances (most of the times when Billy is himself, he tend to commit suicide). Though Keyes included the background and process of some of the main selves, and their personalities, the book didn't clearly explained how (and why) Billy managed to create up to 23 selves, which some had similiar personalities. Billy spent years in mental hospital, went through many kinds of treatment, even got married (though his wife ran away with his money shortly after the weeding),and finally released in 1988. I think the book is really can open one's mind and rise deep empathy in seeing the impact of child abuse and and the suffering it brings.
Earlier this evening, I finished Sex, Time, and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution by Leonard Shlain. I always feel strange how long it takes me to read anything by Shlain, his non-fiction work seeming so filled with facts, science, and art, but I managed to read this one relatively quickly; this work, and his two other books, I once created a thread for here, for anyone interested.
Through all of his books, Shlain tends to maintain a fairly skeptical, passive position, stating facts based on credible science, deducting from various arts, and incorporating all (or most) opinions on a controversial issue (such as evolution). No book I have read by Shlain has failed to send me into long episodes of deep thought, as he does well to leave judgments up to a reader, rather than preaching his own ideas. I cannot claim to have enjoyed Sex, Time, and Power as much as his two previous books, but I still loved it.
My rating: 9/10.
strategos,
The last two were books I recommened the other week.It's great you have got to read them since!:)I agree that The Shadow of the Wind is a good book, it's one of the best books I've read this year.I read it at the start of the year and still find the characters to be memorable.It's rather a new issue and was in translation.And I find Snow Falling on Cedars to be such an interesting story and I personally enjoyed the film(it's rare though as usually the books are superior)as the cinematography was brilliant, especially the scenes in the snow and running through the cedar trees(I love the part where they take shelter and meet in the one tree and taste the drips of rain) and breathtaking beach(and the war scene) and cold landscape.